THE Ministry of Education states that 90,000 students have registered online in its Schools Learning Management System (SLMS).
It is also working with stakeholders to provide devices and internet connectivity to students who do not have to connect to the SLMS.
In a release it noted, “The SLMS as available to approximately 230,000 student users from the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) to secondary level whose usage is monitored and supervised by teachers and parents.”
The release noted that the SLMS platform has been utlilised as follos:
- Over 90,000 Trinidad & Tobago students have registered online
- More than 4,000 teachers have registered as content creators
- 368 courses are available for ECCE, Primary & Secondary with quality assurance conducted by the Curriculum Division
- 2,000 virtual classrooms have been created and operating since March 16th 2020
- Virtual classes range from 44 – 95 students
The release stated that the ministry has created facilities for the edification and training of both teachers and parents.
It stated that through its collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) principally, NIHERST, SHELL and various universities, including MIT, has uploaded the following Content to the Ministry’s SLMS:
- Webinar: How to Teach and Learn from home;
- Game based design;
- Designing, Developing and Teaching Online; (these are staggered accredited courses which span three months);
- Instructional Design for online use;
- Understanding and Using Open Educational resources and
- Open Educational Student Resources, which provide a wide range of interactive e-books, games, simulations and activities which support learning for each level (ECCE, Primary, Secondary) including TVET.
- Parental support has been provided by making available:
- Guidelines for Learning from Home
- Samples of daily schedule for students to follow for completing their lessons and assessments, and
- Contact information for parents requiring individual assistance and support.
The release stated, “As was recently highlighted, Home Based Learning (HBL) can be a challenge for many students who are not equipped with the requisite tools to keep connected at this time.
“To this end, the Ministry of Education has engaged in discussions with stakeholders for the provision of electronic devices to be utilised by those students in need who would be logging into the learning platform in order to continue their learning.
“Collaboration with the Telecommunication Association of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) and the Ministry of Public Administration has also begun with a view to making internet connectivity available to all unserved students and to providing free accessibility to all users of the MOE’s SLMS platform.”
